Psychologists On Overcoming Loneliness, Anxiety & Stress [MASTERCLASS] EP 1320

The issue with depression and anxiety and a lot of the things that we're diagnosed with, myself included, is that Welcome.

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Pulling back and seeing that lens, oh, okay, here's that tendency to compare myself down again, that at least gives me the opportunity to create a new choice, which brings us to the next stage and why my book is called the Work. Because listeners and myself included, oh, many of us could resonate with this. Yes, I'm an overachiever. I have that part in my mind. Yet now what? That part is still there coloring our experiences. So then it is the work of refocusing my attention, paying less focus, you know, 'cause that's our most powerful tool for many of us to begin, not spending time spinning down that framework, spinning down that story, ending up feeling so terrible about myself. pulling my attentional focus away and putting it elsewhere is the best thing we can do for ourselves. To begin, of course, the journey of unpacking and unlearning those deep beliefs.

Do you think a depressive state comes from an obsessive thought process? Is that what I'm hearing it comes from? Like the more you think and ruminate on, I'm not enough, I'd never have this, I suck, I'm not worthy, I'm not deserving, the more I ruminate on it for longer and longer, is that what's gonna put me in that state of being?

It's one of the factors. It's not the only, and because I would come up against this idea of, and I think a lot of times in the field it's criticized, think a different thought. Okay, I can just reframe my, just to use it very generally, my negative thinking and begin to think more positive. And then if anyone is suffering from depression or those symptoms, I obviously can relieve those and feel better about myself. they're messengers of something deeper. So typically with depression, there might and likely is something physiological also at play. There could be some gut issues that are causing inflammation that is causing actual inflammation in the brain and causing those symptoms of depression. There might be some nervous system activation getting stuck in our parasympathetic, in particular, nervous system that results in that hypo energetic arousal when I have no energy, I have no interest. So typically it's thoughts and the physiology that then maps on to thinking those thoughts for a very long time. Though my point of my work, my point of working holistically is to acknowledge the whole story because I'm sure even a lot of listeners right now might have tried an affirmation, tried to think a positive thought and not actually been able to create change because likely they are again living in a state of physiological dysregulation.

Right.

So you might be able to change your thought, but if you're having alcohol at the same time or if you're eating candy and processed foods all day and you're in a stressful environment physically, then it may not also shift your feelings or your emotions. It's kind of like you have to have a holistic approach to what is the root, what's causing me to feel this overwhelmed stress or depression, right?

And it's beautiful that you're using the word stress and very astute because stress is insidious in our culture, and it causes not only psychological, but a whole range of physical health symptoms and ultimately diagnoses. Stress is really problematic, and unfortunately many of us, as even adults, are experiencing increasing amounts of stress, and in my opinion, having very limited coping tools or resources to deal with that stress. So our bodies are Simplest, like really simply, very much stuck in an overstressed, overwhelmed state that's again making change and transformation incredibly difficult.

What are the best coping strategies for humans to help us get out of stress and into more peaceful, calm states that you've seen?

The best ones.

The best coping strategies.

Yeah.

Not like the bad ones, but what are the good ones?

Yeah, we have the access to the most powerful regulator of stress, through our breath. We can learn two things. First, to be just present to or a witness around our body's just regular breathing patterns. As simple as this sounds, the way our body breathes, if we can cultivate a very full, deep breath, very calming breath, chances are our body in that moment is in that state of relaxation, is receptive to the world around, is feeling safe, to express. The large majority of us aren't breathing in that very calm rhythmic way. Most of us have evolved to become chest-based, very shallow breathers. And the reason why I even just talk about our natural rhythm is because our mind is constantly scanning our body and its processes, breathing in particular, because for our mind, that's a marker of how aroused we are, how stressed our body is. So what I noticed when I dropped into my body was that I always breathed very shallow from my chest and at times I would stop breathing. Totally. And that correlated with stress. The more stressed I am, the more I'm actually holding my breath throughout the day. So just that simple act of witnessing to me showed evidence of, wow, Nicole, your body is stressed out day in and day out. In the actual current moment, your body continues to send signals of stress. And the reason why listeners who might struggle with anxiety or panic, as I once did, why this is problematic is because, like I said, our mind is scanning down and it's going to begin to then think stressful thoughts. It's going to scan the environment for what's wrong. And as we all know, we're very good at identifying what's wrong. Negative, yes.

In that moment.

And then before we know it, the reason why I offer this is now we're caught in a loop. Because now I'm thinking stressful thoughts further activating my body. So dropping in, noticing our body's natural rhythms can give us some clues as to how activated we are. And then of course, the next action step we can take if you're living in an overactivated nervous system as I am, is to begin to harness intentional breathing, beginning to either direct my breath down into my belly if I am in that shallow, stressed out, activated state, or if you're, like I described earlier, having no energy, almost feel like you're not here energetically, we actually want to cultivate that chest based, the more Wim Hof shallow activated tool of breath work to activate our energy system to actually up our energy into our system. So we can use breath work in either direction to control our body's responses. And while this is great for the body and why I talk about it is it can build body balance back in as many of us need it. It's also so empowering. Now, right through an intention, through doing something differently, I can actually create change. And I speak as someone who did suffer from debilitating anxiety and panic attacks. And I know how overwhelming and out of control that can feel. So I mentioned that last piece of empowerment for all of those suffering with anxiety out there, because that can be the steps back to actually creating change and saying, hey, wait, I can control my body. And my body doesn't have to control me when it hits that peak of panic.

What is happening when someone is in a panic attack? What were the feelings like? How long did it last? And how does someone get out of a panic attack moment?

So panic, and again, I'm just simplifying it for understanding purposes, it's that ultimate state of nervous system activation when your body is literally geared up to fight, flight, or flee, which is usually what happens next. We go into that old coping tool or that old resource that we once used. It feels very different for each of us. Some of us actually think it can feel, as I once did, like a heart attack. Wow. I describe an episode in my book where I had just gotten home, I was in a psychoanalytic training program, and as part of my training, every Saturday I would sit in courses to learn how to be a practitioner of the work of psychoanalysis. And one of my courses was a group model where I was a participant in group psychoanalytic therapy. So anyone listening who's been in any therapy, a lot of feelings can come up. So it was a particularly emotional group I had had that morning. And I came home and I was with my partner at the time and long story short, I started to have symptoms. I started to feel sweaty. I started to feel clammy. I almost turned gray looking. And my heart in particular started to beat problematically or of concern. It was pounding. It just felt weird. And I'm someone who had had panic attacks before. I know a panic attack can mimic a heart attack. Yet I was in my down puffy coat curled up in a ball with my cell phone in my hands, just waiting to call 911 because I was convinced that this must be something that's physiologically wrong with me. So some of us it can feel like a heart attack. Some of us it's just that elevation where my heart feels like it's through the roof. I might get that panicked feeling like I'm crawling out of my skin. And it's very, very scary. And what it is, again, it's an extreme state of that nervous system activation. So the best tool is to help our nervous system to go back into that peaceful, calm, safe place. Now, this is where I want to acknowledge that those of us who are in the throes of a panic attack and have never practiced intentional breathing or breath work probably aren't going to be successful. And this is, of course, what we want to do. We want to use the tool only when we need it. This is where we really want to learn how to cultivate that balance in our bodies outside of that 10 moment outside of that acute where panic is crashing down around me. We want to consistently learn how to drop into our bodies. Take a temperature check. How safe is my body? Am I in activation mode or am I calm? And when I'm not calm, learning how to balance my body then so that when, as I feel my panic obviously increasing over time, I can learn how to down regulate myself.

Is the panic attacks, what's the root of that? Is it someone not being aware of their body and breathing, is it allowing stressful thoughts to come in? Is it all of it stacking up over time and then there's a breaking point? What is the root of panic attack?

It becomes all of it over time because our nervous system works outside of our awareness. We have a function, it's called neuroception. It's essentially where we're constantly scanning the environment. Energies even included.

We're not even aware of it.

We're not even aware of our body, our eyes, everything is prime to look for threat. However, threat gets defined based on our past experiences. This is how we can't kind of extricate the two. So something that felt overwhelming back here continues to color my world in my now moment. The feeling that many of us get when we maybe walk into the room or up that alley and just something feels off, we're responding. Our nervous system is always responding to everything in the moment. However, It's doing so based on our past moments. So we could be throwing ourselves, unbeknownst to ourselves, into nervous system activation and some of us are living in it all day long.

Crazy.

When we feel stressed, is it affecting the actual brain or is it affecting the mind? And how do we regulate the two? of the thoughts, the ideas, the mind, the consciousness, I guess, the awareness, or the brain, the physical brain itself. What is stress going up into the brain or is it actually attacking the mind, kind of like outside of the brain?

It can affect both. It affects the brain structure in two ways. The first way is through actual inflammation. Stress, the cortisol that typically is associated with stress, activates our body, activates immune system responses where inflammation is the predominant response. Our brain is actually covered by a very thin film, a blood-brain barrier that's very penetrable. Things can get through. And one of the issues is when inflammation actually lands within our brain. So that can begin to cause structural changes in our brain, as can our mind. The way we think, the way we process our brain can actually change the brain pathways, the systems, areas that we're firing up more frequently than other areas with the most predominant one so many of us are living from our emotional brain, our amygdala, our hippocampus, all of those deeper centers, as opposed to our prefrontal cortex. So this is why it gets complicated. And there are very many brain scans out there of depressed individuals, of anxious individuals, of individuals diagnosed with ADHD or ADD, of autistic, right? All of these diagnoses map onto the brain showing changes though it's the chicken or the egg conversation, because those changes, my argument is, occur as a result of the human's functioning. I believe as far back as in utero, I know that my system was impacted by my mom, by the hormones raging through her body, because I was sharing that body. I was sharing a blood source. I go as far to believe about herself, about me as a baby in her belly, about what my future would be, were impacting, again, my developing. So our environments, I believe, begin to shape us. So hypothetically, I could have came out as a baby infant showing, like I likely did, structural changes in my brain, possibly even an upregulated nervous system. Hard to differentiate whether genetically that's just what it was for me, or again, whether my earliest environment shaped. And I believe in the science of epigenetics that our environments are always shaping ourselves down to our physiology.

Our genetics.

Our environment is shaping our DNA. Shaping our DNA and then shaping our systems, shaping how our brain looks and functions, shaping how our body looks and functions.

Yeah.

Well, what's that study where they put love and anger on water bottles? Did you ever see that? I can't remember. The ice, yes. Yeah, the ice, and then it's either dark crystals, like dead crystal, you know, or it's like these beautiful snowflakes. I can't remember what that study was, or that test.

Yeah, where they did the frequency of different emotions and had an ice that would freeze, I guess, ultimately, and it would crystallize in different structural. And it's beautiful because what I see is that shows evidence of how impactful the things that we can't see are. And I think the collective is waking up to the reality that there are a lot of these things that we can't see. There are energies, there are inner knowings, there are messages of all sorts that again we're responding to outside of our awareness that are there even though we can't see them or the science isn't showing it in the graph that fits very comfortably into our human mind. Anytime we're in that expanse of unknown, it's very uncomfortable for us as humans.

It's like we can't see our thoughts but those thoughts will impact us, right? It will impact our structure of our brain, our body, how we feel when we think a certain thing as well in the environment. You mentioned people-pleasing overachiever archetype, right? What are the different types of archetypes that human beings have? Is one people-pleaser overachiever? What are the main ones, I guess?

So just an archetype, so we're having, everyone knows what we're talking about here. Again, it's a very conditioned pattern way of being. We don't, as humans, typically fall neatly. Some of us might see ourselves in only one archetype. Some of us might see see evidence in different archetypes. We might see different sides of ourself in different types of relationships. So multiple archetypes might apply. Again, they're not, you know, be all, end all categories, but they're general ways of being, typically how we're relating to others in relationships or to the world at large. So I mentioned the overachiever because that's one of my predominant ones. Some others are the caretaker. The person who's always endlessly showing up to service others' needs.

But never their own.

Never their own. A yes person who can't say no, who's always again in another model of service. There's a hero worshipper archetype, always outsourcing, always looking for the person or the thing that has an answer as opposed to within.

And so if we are aware of that first, kind of our main archetypes, Is the next step learning how to heal or is it learning how to re-parent or what would be the next phase that we should in doing the work?

So the first, as I always acknowledge, for some of us just having that awareness. Yes, you know, I'm continuing to have my needs unmet in relationships because that's usually the byproduct of assuming roles or wearing these masks is my full self isn't being expressed or I'm chronically not acknowledging any of my needs. For some of us, acknowledging that role and typically where it came from, though that's not mandatory. You don't need to know the thing that hurt me. But for some of us, that can be relieving. That can offer an alternate version of narration as opposed to, I'm broken, which is usually where we end up. Oh, I'm unfulfilled in my relationships because I'm unlovable, because something's wrong with me. So for some of us, just having that awareness, no, I'm the overachiever, I'm the caretaker because of things that have happened. as a result of my experiences. For some of us, that's healing in and of itself.

Is that, are these coping mechanisms then?

Typically.

These kind of master archetypes.

It's like we do this because we're- Our way of being becomes, I call it the onion. We, by the time we're in adulthood, we're living such a conditioned way, typically as a result of coping with something.

That was too overwhelming or too difficult at one time. And the coping, is it all back to feeling seen, heard, and acknowledged? It's like we do these things so.

That someone sees us or acknowledges us. and/or to then, as a byproduct, avoid the pain that once was. If showing, so the life of the party, I'll use an example, if at one point when I showed sadness, you know, I didn't feel it didn't feel accepted given whatever has happened.

Right.

Right.

Then if I stop, if I modify, if I do not tell Mom the sad thing that happened, I don't have to feel that pain of that rejection. I just say a little less of my sadness and a little less of my sadness over time. So it's a coping to avoid that hurt that was once unbearable.

It's to either be seen or to avoid pain. Is that it? So how should we, what archetype should we live in?

So once we become aware, right, if the relief can go so far for some of us, then we're still left with us and our conditioned way of being. We're still left with that habit, that pull, like I shared throughout my book even, my overachiever is right there ready for that reaction in each and every moment. So cultivating new responses is ultimately the next step. Responses that we now get to choose as an adult. At one point we weren't gifted with choice. We were in environments that we had no say around. Now, I can show up, I can make a new choice, so I can learn a new way of being. I can begin to show maybe all aspects of myself, walking through the discomfort that will come along with change and the vulnerability that's part of the process now of showing a new part of myself, though over time that allows me to cultivate my full self-expression. So the work, as my book offers, is still part of the journey. Awareness isn't going to create change because those habits are mapped down into our subconscious pathways that are at the ready. We've gotten really good at firing them up, and our brain actually prefers that path. So showing up in our conscious mind, teaching ourselves that we always have that pathway that leads to all of the consequences that they've always led to, and then this pathway could lead to something else that will probably be uncomfortable because it's new, it's uncharted territory, though it could help me march toward a future of my choosing.

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How does someone learn to re-parent themselves if their parents are no longer here? Like, how do they even go down that path, which might seem just a little weird? It's like, am I supposed to repair myself? That sounds weird. What is a non-weird way to approach that? And is that us connecting to our five-year-old self or whenever that situation occurs first started that was painful and having a conversation and actually connecting to that child, is it a daily practice of connecting to something on the inside? What does that look like?

I appreciate the question and I will acknowledge too that I think anytime we hear this idea of child and we're an adult, I mean some of us into, you know, years into adulthood, it does feel uncomfortable. It does feel like, what do you mean, I'm out of childhood? I don't have that aspect of myself. I'm an adult now. I'm of the belief that our inner child is carried with us in many different ways. And we could start with maybe the least scary through our daily habits and patterns. Typically, you're caring for your body, I imagine, unless you made an intentional shift at somewhere in your adult life the same way you were taught to. How our physical needs are identified and met in adulthood typically is a reflection of how they were once met in childhood, how attuned our caregivers were to their own physical needs, obviously then transferring that into our own attunement with our bodies, identifying what our individual needs are so that over time we can assume that responsibility of meeting them ourselves. I'm of the belief that all of us were raised by humans that are limited by the tools that they had, so I'll be the first to admit, I know that I was raised by two parent figures that didn't really have a full connection to their body and to its physical needs. Um, so again, when they were parenting me or cultivating that awareness in me, it was from that much more limited, consciousness state or that disconnection. So not surprising, I ended up being very disconnected from my own body's knees. Now this applies to our emotional world too. Chances are the habits and patterns the way we tend to our emotions in adulthood is a direct reflection of how we tended or how we were modeled or what coping tools were even available to us at one time in one place. So to do the work of reparenting, we could just see ourselves, witness ourselves in adulthood, see the areas where we are feeling like we show up for our needs. Do we acknowledge physical in our daily life, acknowledging that our body has them day in and day out. Or are we so disconnected that we don't even know what they are? Same thing emotionally. What is our emotional climate? How do we navigate emotions when we have them? And again, can we begin to create new habits? So that's what reparenting, the approachable version is. Can I create new habits and patterns in any of these areas, physical, emotional or spiritual, that better to serve me.

I think, I mean it's tricky because everyone's different, but I believe that when we're ignoring how we really feel and only focusing on, you know, how good we can make things and we're not actually acknowledging the bad, because people always say like good feelings, bad feelings, they're all feelings and they're all okay. And so I think when we go, you know, when we ignore a complete chunk of our life and our experience, and focus instead, it's great to focus on the good, but you still have to acknowledge the upsets, the things that don't turn out the way you planned. And that doesn't make it bad. It's just life, you know?

What does it mean we have to acknowledge?

It's about allowing yourself to feel it, whatever that is. Like, if I need to cry, I'm gonna let myself cry. If some days I just can't get out of bed and do all the stuff I need to do, maybe that's a sign that I need to take care of myself, right? I need to just allow myself to have the ups and downs. At the same time, and this is why it's tricky for people, is I don't want you to like ruminate or like, you know, just let yourself wallow. There's a time for acknowledgement, feeling, venting about it to people, you know, therapist, a friend, but then what? Then we take the steps to move forward.

How long should we ruminate, vent, grieve.

Over.

A situation that affects us? Does it matter the weight of the situation where it might be a death or someone close to you versus someone says something mean to me that triggered me from childhood struggles? Is there a rumination period that is healthy? Are we all different in how we grieve and heal and move forward? Is it the level of trauma that matters?

Yeah, a lot of it has to do with the level. So if it's someone just said something mean that really hurt my feelings, or let's say I had a really bad interview, I need to get a job and it just went horribly. And so the whole day I'm feeling terrible. That's okay to give yourself that day and maybe the beginning of the next day and then we move on. What's next? What's another thing I can, can I send out my resume to someone else?

Then we take action.

But then when it comes to like death in the family or- or a breakup. Yes. There's like the top 10 most stressful things in your life, like moving, Um, divorce, death in the family, just to name a few. Um, and I know moving sounds crazy, but if you've ever moved, you know.

How stressful it is.

Very stressful. That those are things that are okay to give yourself like a month or two of adjustment time, knowing that, you know, there still needs to be action in there. Like, Hey, if I'm having a tough time functioning in my life, I can't be there for my friends or my family. I can't do my job, you know, things like that, then I should seek out professional help. like a therapist or psychiatrist or, you know, any of those things.

Why is moving top of the list of stresses, traumas? Is it because we've lived in this old identity and this home feeling and it's just like a newness or a new identity or what is it?

I think it's a lot of things. Some of it is newness. Also routine. We love routines. Our brains, our bodies love that. I mean, if any of you have ever tried to get up around the same time and you have like rituals in your day, super helpful for our mental health, physical health, all that good stuff. So moving disrupts everything, right? We have to find new places for everything. The whole scenario where we're at and what it feels like, it's just everything is so different. Not to mention, you know, having to package up all your stuff. It can be overwhelming. It's traumatic in itself.

Even though it can seem exciting, it can also be traumatic. Maybe that's why the first, my girlfriend moved Christmas Day, essentially like six months ago, right before corona and she moved from a different country in with me and it was kind of traumatic for both of us.

I was excited.

I think we were both excited but then it was like oh but this is a challenge for her. She doesn't know where to go to get you know her nails done or food or find friends and just the normalcy of it and it's a different culture. It's a different country. It's you're living with someone now.

Yeah.

And I had my routine but she didn't have hers so I had to constantly like you know, work together to make it work. So it's stressful for sure. I can, I can relate to that and I didn't have to move. I'm interested because my entire childhood, I had a sense of deep loneliness, deep insecurity, loneliness, worry, fear that no one was ever gonna like me and no one was ever gonna love me. And I'm assuming that it was a number of the instances I experienced in my life, the number of stories, the number of things I witnessed and experienced that built a story in my mind that no one's going to like me or love me. And I took it upon myself when I was a teenager. When I started to have friends when I was a teenager in high school, I started to still feel a sense of loneliness with people around me and people liking me. I still felt a deep sense of loneliness and the need to get people to like me. And I took it upon myself to overcome that challenge by spending a lot of deep alone time and falling in love with myself and falling in love with like who I am and writing letters to myself, taking myself out on dinner dates, but alone, movies all the time to the point where I said, you know what? I really enjoy my own company. I don't need to feel good. around other people anymore. Me having kind of the vision to break this mold, it took me like creating challenges for myself, like experiencing deep pain of, you know, figuring out how to love myself. What are your thoughts on loneliness? Why do people feel lonely in general when they have lots of friends or they don't have friends?

And what do you think is kind.

Of the root of loneliness?

Yeah, I love that, first of all. That's like all the homework I give my patients all the time. Like dating yourself. Really? Yeah, like writing letters. I mean, if any of my viewers are listening to this, they know how often I talk about writing letters to yourself. Love letters, letters from your childhood self to your adult self.

I can really get into that. How to hug your childhood self now and heal.

Oh my goodness. Let them feel heard and understood in a way they couldn't. That's so much of this. Oh, you just feel it, right? As an adult, you're like, oh, that was so hard. But I think loneliness happens for a lot of reasons. Loneliness occurs, I think, for some people, it's because we never let people truly know us, either because it doesn't feel safe or we don't truly know ourselves.

Oh, how do we get to know ourselves?

You have to be curious. I think so often we judge. I mean, I'll be honest, as a kid, There's so many awkward moments in my life or times when I wished, like I grew up in the country. And so some of my friends had like wealth, some didn't, some parents were like business people. My dad was a boilermaker. So we were very like blue collar. I grew up on a Christmas tree farm. And there were times I wanted for that. How come I can't have that? Every kid has that, right? Or why doesn't my body look this way? Why am I so gangly? And why is this look? You know, there's so many things that as a kid I was so uncomfortable. and I think being open to being curious about that, like, why am I uncomfortable? What is so wrong with me? So often we just accept something's wrong with me. And then we take that as a truth.

That's what I thought my whole life. I was like, something's wrong with me.

No one, you know.

Yeah. No one's gonna understand it. I'm wrong, I'm bad, you know.

Oh, totally. Stupid, all this stuff. We have those thoughts. There was something I'd read, I forget the study that it was, that supported this, but somewhere between 60,000 and 90,000 new thoughts every day. Or not new thoughts, but just thoughts. And 94% of them or something are the thoughts we've had. We've already had them.

Oh, we've already repeating the thoughts.

So, and most, a lot of them are bad. I will be honest. I would estimate like 60% of them are negative.

Well, they're probably like fear based of like worry base of am I looking good or is this, you know, what.

Do they think about me, right?

Yeah.

And that's because our brain is wired to seek out threat, right? It keeps us safe, make sure we're okay, and good things aren't threatening. So of course we're gonna focus on like, Hey, that person was whispering when I walked in the room. I think they're talking about me.

I don't think they like me. I mean, so how do we train our minds for positivity without it hurting us?

Part of it is just noticing our thoughts. So often we have them kind of building off of the loneliness, right? We have these thoughts that shame built and guilt built. Like something's wrong with me. That's shame speaking out, saying something's intrinsically wrong. People aren't gonna like you. Um, you're so stupid, all of those things. We have to notice if we're having those, if those are the thoughts that we're like taking up our, it's taking up our brain space and our time and we're having 90,000 of them in a day. Like it's gonna feel lonely.

You're gonna feel, you're gonna be sick, you're gonna be sad, you're gonna be worried and stressed and anxious. So how do we then get to the root of the loneliness so that we're not feeling lonely anymore? I'm hearing you say we need to discover and pay attention to who we are. We need to explore ourselves.

We need to, you know, what else does that look like? Yeah, I think part of it is recognizing why. We said it could be because you don't know yourself or you're afraid to let people know you. So recognizing that, recognizing how honest we're being with ourselves and others, a lot of loneliness comes out of that. But when it comes, it really means.

We'Re not revealing who we are. We're hiding things. We're not opening up fully. We have secrets that we're unwilling to share because we feel like other people are going to shame us or not like us. Exactly.

I can't tell you how many times I hear from my patients or viewers that they don't feel comfortable telling their friends, close friends, that they're having a hard time. So like, oh, I don't want them to think I'm attention seeking. I don't want them to think, you know, and we're making those assumptions, right? Like anxiety comes out of either we think we're like reading the magic 8-ball into the future or we're focused on the past and we can't just be present. And so a lot of People will say, you know, say, I can't even tell them when I'm having a tough time, but we've put ourselves in our own jail with that, right? No one else put that there.

We're saying, it's not okay. Yeah, I feel like a lot of people want to help someone. Like if you say, like, I'm actually kind of struggling with this today. I feel like people want to be a solution, want to be a listening ear, want to be a helping hand if their friend is going through a challenge. I think when you, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think if you're always negative, like, oh, my life is over every day with your friends, that's a drag. Yes, and you don't want to be always in need of support, I'm assuming. Well, it's not even in need of support.

I think it's not taking sage advice. Like you're asking for assistance, but you're not accepting of any of it. So you're really not asking, you know what I mean? Right. And I think that's when it becomes like I call like an emotional vampire or like a toxic relationship where you're just like, if you're the person trying to offer that help, it's just like they're taking and taking and you're giving and you're giving and they're not getting anywhere.

It's like being a mentor in business. or life. I get a lot of people that ask me, you know, to pick my brain or to give them mentorship. And the worst thing that a mentor can have is someone who wastes their time, who doesn't take action. I'm like, okay, here's the game plan. If this is what you want, go do this for the next 60 days. And then when they don't do it, you're like, why did I waste my time?

Yeah.

If I'm prescribing you something to try, whether it works or not, and you don't do it and you keep wanting more advice, it's a time suck.

Totally, and it doesn't benefit either of you, right? Because it's just lip service. It's not actually going to turn out to be anything.

And say someone's feeling really lonely right now, whether it's they've been lonely before corona or now it's like they feel even more lonely. Like what can they do? You know, three to four things they could do for the next 30 to 90 days to help them discover themselves, to help them become a little less lonely and fall in love with themselves a little more.

Yeah, there's a couple of things. First, kind of going back to what we're talking about originally is noticing your thoughts. Because I do believe if we are able to change our thoughts, we change our life. It's miraculous and it's very simple, but it's also very difficult. So if they notice those thoughts and track down your top five, okay? Because remember we're saying most of them are repeat thoughts. So those could be things like, I'm not good enough, They're not gonna like me. I'm a loser. I don't know. Trust me, we've all had those thoughts, no judgments. Write down your top five and then I want you to work using bridge statements, I call them, into more positive because no one's gonna believe, I mean, I'm sorry, but if I think I'm stupid, I can't be like, I'm smart. I'm smart.

I'm not gonna believe it. Even in my head, I'm just like, that's a lie. That's a lie. There isn't proof to show, like if for me, I thought I've been stupid my whole life because I was always in the bottom of my class with my grades. So I was like, there's no evidence. So it's a lie if I say I'm smart because I don't believe I'm.

Confident enough to feel smart. Yeah, because you're checking your facts, right? And you're like, Hey, based on our horrible schooling system.

Right, right.

I was very street smart, but I didn't calculate that and I wasn't aware of that. Well, it's not measured, right? I know, right?

Okay, so bridge statements, what does that look like? It lives in possibility land. It's like it's possible like for your example, let's say maybe I'm not as dumb as I think I am. It's possible that I could have other gifts in other ways that I'm intelligent. I'm open to that idea. So we're not saying I am or I'm not. We're just like it's possible I'm not 100% correct on this. And then we just kind of live in that land and start moving a little bit more. Then the next step would kind of be something like You know, I do think I have some street smarts, so it's possible that I'm intelligent in that realm. Maybe. I'm going to look into that.

Okay.

You're kind of building your evidence along with these bridge statements into the space of, you know, I'm super smart.

Gotcha. Okay. So that's the second step. What's after that? What's the next phase?

Then once we've done that kind of work, I think the letters to yourself Super helpful. I love that you did that.

But come on now, Katie, isn't this super woo-woo-y and- Hey, if- Self-helpy, that's like, there's no science that backs this.

No, there is science that backs it. So, I mean, in as short and simple as a way I can explain it, you know, we always hear that old adage, like, you can't teach an old dog new tricks, but you can. Every day our brain is learning. In our hippocampus, where memories are formed, it creates these new neurons every day. and those neurons get together with each other to create memories and learnings, right? So each and every day, whether we recognize it or not, we're learning new things. And instead of taking that opportunity to teach ourselves nasty things, like, I'm horrible, I'm stupid, let's take that opportunity to teach ourselves things that are helpful, supportive, you know, maybe I can get to know myself because I've never taken the opportunity to actually learn about what makes me tick. I've just numbed out and zoomed through life.

So what do these letters look like? Is it once a day you're writing a letter? Is it once a week, month?

What?

And what is the letter saying?

I like to keep it pretty simple so that it's something we can do, because I think too often in therapy, especially and in the woo-woo land of psychology that we can, like self-help land, it can get too labor intensive and then we don't do it. So I like to keep it to a letter to yourself tomorrow, because the only person I'm competing with is really myself, like yesterday.

Oh, yeah.

And so if we keep it to that, like, you know, dear, dear self, you know, it could be like, today I hope for, or I'm grateful for this tomorrow. I hope to. I want you just to keep it in a, you know, 24-48 hour window of what you are grateful for, what you hope for, and what maybe didn't work out again. We don't want to negate the things that aren't good. We just want to acknowledge them. Like, hey, I tried this, and I still felt bad, so. I'm not gonna do that one. Tomorrow I'm gonna try this. And so it just keeps us kind of moving forward and keeping it short and sweet, just those like I'm grateful for, I'm hopeful for things that worked out or didn't work out, you're done. It's kind of like that's why five-minute journals are so popular. Yeah, exactly. To keep with that. And I would encourage people to try to do this if you can every day, awesome. But at least every other day, just so you're checking in with yourself to see how you're moving along, how you're doing. And I think that will give you The thing that's cool about journaling is we can go back then and be like, oh my God, me six months ago would never have thought that I could do this. Or, you know, we lose sight of our own growth and development because we're with ourselves all the time.

I know.

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So, I really like this idea of quick short letters to yourself tomorrow. I'm a big fan of meditation. I was just talking with my buddy Jay Shetty last night about meditation and how we talk about meditation so much in kind of our space. But he was like, but 80% of the world, 90% of the world still doesn't know about meditation and isn't doing it. Even though we hear it and talk about it so much, we think like we're sick of talking about the same thing. But I'm a big fan of meditating because I feel like you can be aware of your thoughts and you can start. And I like to plan the day. I do it in the morning and I like to think about what do I want to create this day? What's the greatest version of myself today? But I really like the idea of self meditating over pen and paper for tomorrow as well by writing a letter to yourself because you're setting an intention as well. You're saying, this is what I want to start thinking about. Brain, when my brain starts saying you're ugly and stupid and worthless, no, I'm going to switch it. and here's what we're going to do. So you're just preparing yourself for all the different challenges that may come. And I think, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think we don't prepare ourselves or set ourselves up to win, then we're always going to be in reaction mode because we haven't trained our mind to win.

Is that right? Yeah, 100%. It's like a confirmation bias. Like if I go looking, I'm always talking to my audience about this and my patients, like if I go looking for negativity, if I go looking for a reason to be upset, I'm going to find it. And so we want to make sure that we're looking for reasons to be excited, things that we can do better, reaching the goals or feeling productive that day, whatever that means for you. Productive might be I laid on the couch and did some self-care, watched some TV, talked to my friends. You know, that's still productive. But I think in a lot of ways we just, we go searching for bad things and then we're surprised that we find them.

Exactly. Is there a next step in this process of loneliness and getting to know yourself if you're doing the daily letters for tomorrow. What would you say are the next kind of steps?

Yeah, I think the next thing, and this is going to be the hardest for people, and they're probably like, but I want you to tiptoe into social land in an authentic way. So if we have friends that we already talk with and we think, hey, they don't know me. You know, I'm still lonely, even though, like, I've heard from a lot of people, I can feel super lonely, even though I'm in a crowded room with people that I know. I want you to be more authentic. I challenge you to pick one person that I'll give you like two weeks to do this. One person that you're going to be honest with about how you're doing or what's going on.

And that doesn't say I'm fine. Everything's good.

Exactly.

Don't just repeat the same thing you always say. Like, yeah, everything's great when it's not. When you've got some underlying issue.

Totally. We instead, we need to say something to the effect of, Yeah, it's been kind of hard, you know, I've been going through a tough time. I mean, right now, especially with the coronavirus and our world feeling like it's turned upside down, it's, I think it's even more acceptable to be like, yeah, it's been rough. You know, these past few months have been pretty terrible. And they would understand, you know, and we're just tiptoeing. We're not sharing a bunch. I don't want you to like, what I call like verbal diarrhea.

We don't want to share it all at once.

We want to keep it all over someone's face. Yeah, exactly. And they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, I wasn't ready for that. So we just want to start little things like, hey, last week was kind of bad, but you know, I'm trying again this week. How have you been? You know, we share a little bit, we reflect it.

So don't spend an hour just, you know, going down the deep end, but open up some.

Yeah, letting them know that it's not all peachy keen all the time.

What does that do for you and other people when you open up a little bit?

First of all, it allows you to be your authentic self so that people can slowly get to know you. Not to mention at the same time you get to know yourself and then it that little bit of vulnerability leaves space for real relationships and I think that that's why a lot of us are feeling lonely is because we don't really either know ourselves or allow other people to know us yous know, it's hard. It's uncomfortable and that's why I want you to pick one person one person you have if we check our facts and our you know, I always talk about being a detective maybe it's cuz I love crime shows but you got.

To pick the right person you trust.

Yes.

Because I'm a health psychologist this, I was trained to view stress as the enemy. And if you look at the science, you can find evidence that stress increases your risk of everything people don't want, from heart disease to depression, all of it. But almost 10 years ago, I came across this study that made me really rethink stress. And it was a study that tracked about 30,000 adults for almost a decade in the US. And at the beginning of the study, they asked people, first, how stressful is your life? And then also, do you believe that your stress is harmful? Do you believe that stress is bad for your health? And so they followed them to find out, like, is it true that stress kills? And what they found is that for the subset of people who had a very stressful life and most strongly believed that their stress was harmful, they had a 43% increased risk of dying from any cause over the next decade. But the people who had the most stressful lives and did not strongly believe that stress was bad for them, they were the most likely to be alive at the end of the decade. And this study caught my attention because first of all, it suggests that stress is not always the enemy. At least it's not always a risk factor in the way that we think about it. But then also it was making me think, how many of those deaths was I personally responsible for by going out there trying to convince people that stress was bad for their health and that the stress will kill your brain cells and eventually kill you? So that was kind of like a wake up moment for me to start to want to investigate, is it possible that how you think about stress can interact with stress to help you avoid some of the consequences we don't want? And maybe even something good about stress worth embracing so that your mindset could help you harness some of your personal strengths, help you harness the strength in your community to get some positive outcomes we maybe don't usually associate with stress. So I think I'm trying to shy away from the idea that stress isn't bad unless you believe it is, which is sometimes how my work gets summarized. That's not the case. I mean, like you said, I'm a scientist, so I understand data. stress is a paradox. Stress is not something that we often get to choose. So it's not like even if you had a wish list and you could say, I want this much stress and this type of stress, it's not like we have that opportunity. So what I'm really interested in is this idea that we now call the stress mindset effect, that there are ways of thinking about stress that can make your body's response to stress healthier, that can change what happens in your brain in moments of stress that make you braver, more resilient, more willing to accept help from others, and that these mindsets basically change the trajectory of how stress affects you. That's the big idea that I hope to share with people. When do we know that we are.

Experiencing good stress versus bad stress? Yeah. No such thing as good stress or.

Bad stress, I want to say. That is, again, another, I think, a big misconception around stress because, you know, people will say things like, oh, good stress. It's like the stress of getting a promotion or the stress of winning the lottery or the stress of doing something really exciting. that you're good at. You're like, that's good stress. Bad stress is all the stuff we don't want. It's the pain, it's the suffering, it's the loss, it's the uncertainty, it's what we actually mean when we say we're stressed. It's all of that. So I, you know, forget good stress, bad stress, because it sets us up to think that if we're experiencing what all of us will instinctively say, didn't want this, like the bad stress, that's the real stress for most of us. And again, most of us don't get to choose how stressful our lives are, how stressful the world is. I mean, the time we're living in now is a perfect example of that. And if you label things good stress, bad stress, it can lead to things like believing, let's say you're trying to homeschool your kids right now, and it's enormously stressful, and you're feeling like a bad parent and a bad teacher, and you can't figure out how you're gonna get through today, let alone tomorrow, if you believe that's bad stress, you're gonna believe, I'm not cut out to be a parent. There's something wrong with my kids. There's something wrong with my life. And I just like, let's, no. Here's the distinction that I like to make. Life can be difficult. So that, good or bad. But stress is what arises in you when something that you care about is at stake. So it's your thoughts, it's your emotions, it's your biology, it's the stress hormones, it's the adrenaline. it's your desire to reach out to others, it's sometimes a sense of outrage and anger, it's all the stuff that emerges to help you meet a moment that matters. And so what I like to focus on is in moments of stress, some of those instincts are going to be healthy and helpful and others are not. So rather than like stress being good or bad, it's about learning more about your stress responses, the repertoire that's available to you, and how do you get good at stress so that you can tell in a moment of stress, is this a moment that requires slowing down and going within? Or is this a moment that requires being vulnerable and asking for help? Is this a moment that requires ignoring everything else and rising to the challenge because it's an emergency and I need that adrenaline to let to do it? There's a lot of different ways to be good at stress and that's the good that I like to focus on.

Yeah, I'm a big believer that our life is an interpretation and the language we use dictates the way we think and feel. And the more we say, I'm stressed, I'm overwhelmed, any word that we use after I am, we start to manifest more in the mind and the body and they connect and we create that. I'm sick, I'm not feeling well. The more we say these things, now we should be aware of these things and not just act like it's not there. But I think when we use language and almost eliminating the word stress or overwhelm and reframing it can be a powerful thing as well. What is your thoughts on how we use words around our stress, anxiety, loneliness, depression? How should we be using words and language during that time?

There are a lot of examples that I can go into, but I want to start from an overview. this is where that improv idea of yes, and can be really helpful. Because, and I know you've talked with other guests about this too, sometimes there's a tendency to want to be so positive that we ignore reality. And, you know, one of the things is, one of the reasons that I'm drawn to the research that I do and the topics that I talk about is because it is not in my nature to be positive, right?

So anytime, you're a negative person.

Pessimistic, anxious, overwhelmed, existential dread, terrified by life from birth.

The world is against you.

Yeah.

Yeah, and not because necessarily life experiences that have shaped that worldview. I believe a lot in genetics also. So I think that's my temperament. So I'm drawn a lot to these ideas of choosing positive emotions, reframing things, because it's the antidote to my habits that can become destructive. So I think part of this is that's another way, you could introduce me to somebody who needs to seriously come to terms with the reality of suffering and I'd push them in the opposite direction. And, you know, oh no, I'm never stressed. Oh, everything happens for a reason. I want to be like, I would want to ground them in the opposite that is also true. So, but let's get back to the idea because there is some truth to positive language and mindsets A really simple example, we know that the physiology of anxiety and excitement are really similar in your body and in your brain. And if you were to take someone who's feeling really anxious, measure their heart rate, look at the ratio of stress hormones that are coursing through their bloodstream, and you look at someone who's really excited, they're almost identical. One of my favorite studies was actually they had people jumping out of airplanes, and some people were terrified, and some people were like, this is what I live for. Physiology looked exactly the same, right? The only difference is the story that they were telling themselves about this experience, you know, whether they felt capable of it. And so there's research suggesting that in moments of anxiety, even if truly you're anxious, you're not excited in that moment, you say to yourself, all right, well my heart is pounding. This means my heart is in it. My heart is giving me energy to meet this moment. and you could try saying to yourself, like, I'm here for this. Or whatever your version of, if saying I'm excited feels like too far, just I like to say my heart is in it, which is a step from anxiety towards excitement.

Yeah, it's not about lying to yourself or faking it until you make it.

It's about saying, okay, my body is.

Getting ready for this. I can feel my body in this.

Moment, so let's roll. And what we know is that as soon as people do that, it starts to subtly shift their physiology in a way that actually is a little bit healthier than like a fight or flight response.

Yeah.

So, you know, it's more in their favor against them.

Yeah.

It's yeah, you get more energy, less inflammation in your body. You're starting to move towards a stress state that really is just helping you have energy and courage and enjoy the moment. And it also increases positive emotions like confidence and enthusiasm. It makes you better able to connect with other people too. I mean, there are studies that do a similar kind of mindset reset for people who are about to enter a stressful conversation. And like, you know, one of my favorite studies, I found that people made more eye contact and they were more likely to mimic the other person's body language in this really natural way that helps build rapport just by reframing their anxiety as energy that they could harness as a sign that they care. So that's one example. And that, you know, that's a far cry from something like saying, this is good for me, therefore it is. There's something, these resets are pretty specific because they're grounded in biological reality. I'll give you one other example. One of the biological things that often happens when we're stressed is changes in our brain and in the hormones in our body that make us lonely. And you can start to feel really alone. And what most people don't recognize is that is your, just like when your heart is pounding, it's your body trying to give you to act. When you feel lonely, that's your brain and your body trying to get you to connect. It is making you hungry for support, for connection, for allies, for teamwork and cooperation. And so it produces like a hunger for social contact and community. And too often people feel that loneliness and what they think is, it's because I'm alone, it's because no one understands, it's because I'm the only one. and they mistake what the signal is and they tell themselves a story that actually makes them further withdraw. So that's another type of stress signal that when you understand what's happening in your biology, you can embrace it and say, this is a sign to reach out.

Dr. Wow. So when we feel lonely, we shouldn't continue being lonely. We should actually reach out and create connection and not say, no one's going to understand my pain right now, so I'm going to stay in my bed for two weeks and watch Netflix alone. and get more depressed, that's not the solution.

Yeah, often the, you know, it's interesting. I mean, this is sort of speaking more broadly as a psychologist, I often find that the beliefs that people tell themselves that are most painful are almost always, it's just telling you what you care about. Like, if you, when you're telling yourself a story about being alone and lonely, what you're actually revealing is like, you know, people care about you and you need to reach out. Like, you need your people, you need your community.

No one's really thought, I've never really thought about that way and saying like, if I feel lonely, it means people care about me. And I need to reach out because they want to get connected to.

Your body and brain, they aren't stupid. If nobody cared about you, you wouldn't actually experience a desire for community and contact. The brain is very interesting. It's like, you know, it's funny with depression, often one of the most insidious things about it is depression will actually start to lie to you and it will start to tell you there's nothing you can do and there's nobody who cares and you actually have a very suppressed stress response. And I don't mean you're not suffering, but stress is, you know, it's a physiological thing and it often involves hormones and energy and brain activity that is trying to push you in the direction of meeting life. And when you're depressed, you actually stop feeling like there's anything that you can do to meet this moment or that there are other people who could help you and support you. And like that's what's so insidious and ugly about depression is it's a lie. If you're not in that state, you can really start to read a lot of these signals that we experience as difficult emotions or annoying physiological symptoms of stress as actually pointing you to the strengths that you have and how you can respond and what you need in this moment.

What's the reason for depression for human beings? Why does it happen to so many people when it doesn't feel like there's a good purpose for it? What is that reason?

There are a lot of theories about this. I won't say that I know any of them to be better than other theories. But I do subscribe to the idea that you wouldn't see something in humanity that has no so a lot of the things that we experience as not something we would choose for ourselves, things like grief, anxiety, depression, anger, they serve a function. So one of the thoughts is that depression in its sort of initial form is meant to help you conserve energy and withdraw from reactivity and and giving away of your energy and attention so that you can kind of pull back, slow down, pause, and process what's happening in your life. And that's, you know, psychologists sometimes call that like reactive depression. It's normal, it's typical when things in your life are difficult.

And, you feel completely overwhelmed, completely stressed. People don't understand you and you're just like, okay, I need to take a break to actually reflect on what's happening in my life.

This in the way that if you were running an ultra marathon, you get tired and your body work and brain work very hard to convince you to slow down and take a break because it's in your best interest. Now, so that's one theory. Another theory, which I find very plausible, is that depression is the equivalent of what you see in animals called the defeat response. And this is if you are an animal, in the wild. And you experience so much rejection from your community, your family, your group. So you've been ostracized. You have very little access to resources on your own. You can't find a way to survive on your own. You will see these changes happen in the brain and body that they're called the defeat response, but it's this biological cascade that basically convinces animals to crawl away and die, to give up on life. And so, like, if you stress out a rat enough by, say, putting them in a cage with a bunch of rats that bully that rat incessantly, and the rat can do nothing to escape, and you're not giving it resources, and it's got no purpose in life, Maine.

Where life the way it should be transforms all who encounter its spectacular landscapes. Rugged coastlines, pine-scented trails, sandy beaches, sparkling lakes, and tranquil forests inspire you to reflect and make meaningful moments. They offer endless opportunities for adventure and exploration. Whether peddling or paddling, hiking or biking, Maine has more than enough outdoor spaces to make the most of long summer days. Relish in exquisite flavors harvested from the ocean and the rich soils of orchards and fields. Maine's makers are rooted in its heritage while boldly branching into new ways of thinking, doing, and being. Connect with its people in warm and authentic towns which beckon you to stroll art galleries and locally owned shops. Where generations of artists, writers, entrepreneurs, and craftspeople see the world anew. It's tempting to do it all when you visit, but take a beat and a breath. Get a feel for the time and tempo of Maine. Simple pleasures, Scenic Adventures, where every route is the scenic one. Discover more at visitmaine.com Is it just.

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You will see changes in that rat's brain and biology that then if you throw the rat in a bucket of water, it doesn't even try to swim. It just gives up and drowns. So I think that a lot of what we experience as depression and why depression is an epidemic in so many cultures right now, so many societies, is that a lot of people are experiencing kind of the equivalent of being in a cage and being bullied and not being clear about what can I do to improve my circumstances? Who cares about me? How can I contribute to the world?

Yeah.

And I'm not saying it's necessarily true. I mean, you can feel that way. Even when something is possible, right? That's part of how like, and sometimes it actually is true. Like sometimes you really are in circumstances that can trigger a defeat response. I think that's another reason why depression might exist, in which case it's doing nothing for you. And that's, I mean, it's worth knowing that depression can make your brain turn on you because the depression is not thinking about your well-being.

No, that's crazy.

What do you think are the three.

Or four things that can help us get out of a depressed state of being whether it's been for weeks, months, years, or moments. Yeah.

Well, here I will go to both the science and my direct experience. One of my big interests in life is helping people who find themselves in circumstances they would not have chosen for themselves. And grief is a big one.

Yeah.

Or trauma. So what the science says and what I have seen in people's lives and in my own life is if you're on a do-it-yourself path. So first of all, let me say, obviously you use whatever resources are available to you therapeutically and medically. Now that's not my role. So I don't write prescriptions, I don't do therapy. So I'm not out there in the world sharing that with people. But obviously everything from antidepressants to new treatments like deep brain stimulation and a magnetic stimulation of the brain, therapy, group therapy, one-on-one, all of that stuff. obviously use that and I believe in the power of sort of all of the evidence-based treatments. Okay, but I don't know how to do it, so I'm not out there sharing it. So if you're on a do-it-yourself supportive pathway, in addition to or instead of that other stuff, exercise, number one. And I know how that sounds to somebody who is depressed. I know because I've actually been in the state where I where it was so hard to move, I would have punched someone who told me to exercise if I had the strength to punch someone who told me to exercise. So I understand what it can be like to be in a physical state of depression or grief, where every cell in your motor system is saying, don't move, making it impossible to even get to put one foot in front of the other. That said, there is nothing else you can do that more dramatically and profoundly changes your brain chemistry immediately and in the long term. to relieve depression, whether we are talking about the brain chemistry that kicks in, the adrenaline and the dopamine that just gives you a little bit of energy, even if you're depressed, that tends to kick in immediately to over time, as your brain learns how to benefit from exercise, you will start to get an exercise high that gives you high levels of endocannabinoids and dopamine and endorphins that just transform your outlook on like the day that you exercise. And then six weeks, eight weeks, months later, you see changes in the structure of the brain that can only be compared to what you see from the most cutting edge neurological treatments for depression, things like deep brain stimulation. So yeah, the exercise actually changes your reward system, the structure and function of your reward system in ways that can help it recover from depression or addiction, which can absolutely wreak havoc and the brain's ability to experience joy and anticipate pleasure and stay motivated. Depression, grief, and addiction are all, it's like they all have a very similar effect on the brain's ability to experience positive motivation and take joy in everyday life. And exercise is, as far as I can tell, because I looked for it in the research, as far as I can tell, it's the only thing that you can choose to do that has that kind of impact on your brain in the long term.

Wow.

That's number one.

I could keep going, but you.

Want.

To give me a couple of others.

Okay.

Number two, this is going to sound super cheesy, but I believe this is find a way to be of service to others. I mean, the research really supports this as well. But if you think about, you know, we talked about depression as being possibly, for some people, it's like a defeat response where you've had experiences in life that have misled you into believing that you don't have value or that you aren't cared about or there's nothing you can do to make a difference in your life or in the world. And the fastest way to get contradictory evidence is to volunteer to help someone. There have been a couple times in my life when I was struggling where I re-engaged with not just like donating money when I can, but to show up to a place and help people First was when I was in graduate school and was working in a food kitchen and preparing food and serving food. And then later on, starting to work as an adoptions counselor for animal rescue organizations, where I would actually go and adopt out animals who otherwise might be homeless or even euthanized. When you do that, the thing that is so great about helping others or volunteering is people see you differently in that role. There already was in you that good. Like whatever good is in you, often when you're in a situation of being able to help others, it just gets reflected back to you. And the same thing is true for me in teaching as well. I always say, my students like me so much more than like my family members. There's something about a role where you're trying to help others, where they see you differently.

They appreciate you more.

It's such a gift if you have a voice in your head that says you have nothing to offer, nobody cares about you, there's no good in the world. Because you get this sort of reciprocity where you tap into your desire to do good. You see the only one suffering. That's another great thing about helping others is it makes visible what might otherwise have been invisible. As you see how many other people are struggling with food scarcity, how many other people are struggling with addiction, whatever capacity you're able to volunteer or serve in, you start to realize you aren't alone. Even if that struggle is different than your own, you see the common humanity of it, and again, that people see the good in you. So, I'm sure that sounds cheesy, but I'm gonna stand in the truth of that. And then the third thing- and there's.

Science that backs service.

Yeah.

And not only that, you know, I mentioned this in my TED Talk, so of course you can always find studies showing that stressful life circumstances are bad for your health. So if you lose your job, if you get divorced, if you experience trauma, could that increase your risk of physical health problems, diseases, new mental health challenges?

Yes.

But there are all of these studies showing that if you are someone who regularly volunteers or you have a caregiving role that is not in and of itself a major source of stress. I mean, there are caregiving roles that are enormously stressful. But if you're able to give care in a way that is not that extreme, that those events don't take the same toll on your physical or mental health. There are studies showing that literally you can get fired or get divorced and you would expect it to cause all sorts of problems for your health and your mental health. And that trend or that effect disappears from the population of people who are regularly giving back to their communities or providing care to others. So there is lots of great research.

It's powerful.

And then the third thing I will say is, we and I were talking about this before we went live. Again, beyond, like get on the right antidepressant medication, if that's for you. But one of the only things that you can choose in any given moment that is incredibly helpful for depression or grief or trauma is to have a relationship with an animal who depends on you and who you can have that success experience of providing the care that they need. And actually, in many of my books, I've written about research studies done with groups of people who are healed through their relationships of providing care to animals, including people who experience enormous childhood trauma and came to view themselves as essentially broken. or unlovable, rejected, and then to then go out and adopt or train an animal who was going to be euthanized because it was violent or it was rejected or it was abandoned. And that you, you know, in providing that care and you see the enormous beauty and wonder in that animal and they see it in you.

Thank you so much for listening.

I hope you enjoyed today's episode and inspired you on your journey towards greatness.

Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's show with all the important links.

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And if no one's told you lately, I want to remind you that you.

Are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now Now it's time to go out there and do something great.

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